If you’re looking for ways to improve your relationships, ways to heal from the past, and how to get yourself to a good place when you connect to people in your life, then keep reading.

One of the key essentials that every relationship requires, and it’s going to help you more than anyone else. 

If you’re always struggling in relationships, or you’re always up and down, and you don’t know why. 

You try different things, you do different courses, maybe some counselling, therapy, maybe some coaching, you’re doing all these different things, and it seems to be a temporary fix, but then you keep regressing.

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Sometimes the key fundamentals that we need in life weren’t taught to us in our youth.

We weren’t taught them in schooling. It was like an implicit skill that some people just had.

We were taught implicitly, but we were not taught explicitly, so we didn’t really get the roadmap to relationships.

If you know me and the work within the Muslim Life Coach Institute, you know what we do is reframe our lives through human behaviour or the Science of the Nafs.

We focus on improving, healing, and growing in our relationships. This is what I want to share with you.

THE FOUNDATION OF HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS

One of the key fundamentals is trust.

If you struggle with trust, my guess is you’re going to struggle with this in all of your relationships. It’s going to permeate every different connection that you have and you’re not going to see it happening.

What I see a lot from the relationship coaching and therapy I do is that when we struggle to trust, it reflects something happening deep inside of us.

We don’t like to think about it. So we try to keep ourselves distracted. We keep our minds occupied with different things.

TRUSTING YOURSELF IS KEY TO TRUSTING OTHERS

It’s really important that we’re compassionate to ourselves, and we don’t start to give ourselves a hard time when we realise what’s happening with this lack of trust within.

You can change anything, yes anything.  Because Allah(swt) has given us a way for everything.

Trusting yourself is key so that you can become a giver and not a taker in relationships. When you trust yourself, you’ll be able to enjoy being yourself without being alone.

Your thoughts are always creating this reality in your day-to-day life.

What we think every day creates the emotions we’re experiencing and the behaviour we’re exhibiting. 

And if you stay stuck in what you’re thinking every single day, then that’s going to impact the way you feel and show up in your life.

So it’s really important to look at what’s going on inside your mind. That’s key.

When things aren’t going right, when you feel stuck, when you feel like your relationships are troubled, we start to behave in ways we don’t like.

And then afterward we go to regret and guilt, thinking about, Why did I do this? Why am I behaving like this? 

Maybe I don’t trust Allah, maybe I have a Reliance issue, maybe, maybe, maybe.

We have all these questions that we’re asking ourselves and all these guesses that we make. 

One of the things that relationships do to us, especially your relationship with yourself, is it will impact your relationship with others.

It will impact your relationship with your Creator.

It will make you feel so bad that you end up feeling bad about who you are. And when that happens, we don’t actually tell anyone, we don’t voice that because, for many of us, it feels like a weakness.

And you don’t want to exhibit weakness.

You don’t want people to know that you have some sort of weakness because maybe you’d be taken advantage of, or whatever you think.

We all have different reasons.  

Now, who you want to be, becomes the want and the desire and who you are becomes the focus of your attention.

And when you look at your behaviours as who you are, and you don’t like them, then gradually you’ll start to dislike yourself.

This self-dislike can lead to behaviours that are out of sync with who you want to be and you’ll start to lose trust in yourself. 

It’s a bit of a vicious circle because you lose trust in yourself, and you feel bad. Then you behave in ways that you don’t like and the self-blame and the guilt starts. 

We get stuck in this whole, we don’t like who we are situation. 

The worst thing about this is that you’ll end up blaming your kids for the way you behave, you’ll end up blaming your husband or your wife for the way you behave, your siblings, your colleagues, and your friends.

You’ll blame your circumstances for it.

So it’s like a loop that we get stuck in. 

The good thing is you can actually get out of it because it begins with you.

I’ve learned throughout my life that being alone because when you’re in this state, you often feel alone and misunderstood.

It can be very lonely when you’re in that state.

Even for a guy, even knowing what I know, the Science of the Nafs, it still feels to me, in my nervous system, like a weakness.

But the truth is we’re human beings. 

It doesn’t matter whether we’re men or women, it doesn’t matter where you’re from or what your background is, the mere fact that you’re a human being means you’re going to experience this.

It’s a normal experience but it’s not something you want to get stuck in. Because when you get stuck in that, it really does feel alone.

I speak from experience. I’ve learned that being alone is only ever when I don’t like myself. And this isn’t a licence for you to think or say that liking yourself is arrogant.

That’s not the case.

When you don’t like yourself, you’re going to struggle to like other people. 

You’re going to struggle to be happy in your life because you don’t like yourself. 

The reason we don’t like ourselves often is because we don’t like who we are. And we’re so focused on who we don’t want to be.

But remember, what you’re thinking creates your reality a lot of the time.

So if you don’t like who you are, and your focus is only ever on the negative, then you’re going to create more of it. 

You’re going to be so focused on who you aren’t and start disliking yourself because you’ve got these two images of who you are and who you should be.

We get stuck in this constant loop of berating ourselves, not trusting ourselves, and not liking ourselves.

And in the midst of that, we feel bad.

Obviously, if you’re thinking all these awful things you’re going to feel bad. And if the feeling intensifies, we start to lash out and misbehave.

We behave in ways that we ourselves don’t like and it doesn’t align with who we want to be. Yet, we keep doing it. 

So this loop or vicious circle we get stuck in this. Why do we do this?

We do it because we’re in the pursuit of happiness.

We’re always in the pursuit of happiness.

And we’re taught from a very young age, but we’re not taught about relationships, not with ourselves and not with others.

We’re taught about people but we’re not taught how to connect to people, 

We’re taught about ourselves but we’re not taught how to be okay with ourselves.

We’re taught about our Creator, but we’re not taught how to have a relationship, a connection with our Creator, and not in the way that actually benefits us on a day-to-day basis.

We focus so much in our childhood, in our education, in everything that we do in our early years, on our achievements and the pursuit of happiness and we correlate the two together.

Personally, I’ve been forever in this pursuit of happiness. 

It’s been a lost cause for much of the time because the pursuit of happiness in the early days was all about achievements and goals, accolades, social circles, and acceptance.

All the things we aim for. Having a family, having kids. Everyone has different goals, but you achieve all your goals, and even then, you’re stuck with not feeling happy or content. 

This brings me to the core of any relationship but let’s focus on you because you are the core of your relationships.

You are the part of your relationship that you control. 

If you’re not happy in those relationships, and you’re not happy in the most fundamental relationships which is the one with yourself and the one with your Creator, you’re always going to be in the taking mode.

“I’m not getting my rights, I’m not getting what I deserve. I’m not getting the love and the compassion and the respect and all those things that you want.”

Think about wanting as taking. 

So all of those things that you want, you’re not getting them. And when your focus is on, I’m not getting all of these things, then you’re forever focused on what you don’t have.

That’s a lonely place. 

Because you’re alone in your own mind. 

You can be surrounded by all your friends or your loved ones, but you still feel alone.

When we have that feeling, we attribute it to loneliness or being disconnected or misunderstood.

Not trusting ourselves, not trusting others, not trusting Allah, when all of this is in the mix, then it’s a really awful place.

However, there’s a way to get out of this. And it’s one of the key foundations of any relationship.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS IS IN YOUR PURPOSE

Your purpose is truly what gives you happiness. Because it’s that inner core peace, it’s that inner core alignment between your heart and the only source of true contentment and peace.

Imagine it’s like a spiritual umbilical cord. It’s your source, your line of safety, nourishment, and everything that you could possibly need.

You won’t find it anywhere else. You won’t find it with other people. 

When we’re in that place of connection with Allah (swt), we’re in that place of safety and contentment that we gain only from that.

It brings us back to who we are, being who we are, believing in who we are, and believing in our Creator.

Believing that you’re already alright, the way that you are, and you’re going to be improving as you take the steps day by day. 

What’s going to happen is you’re going to slowly stabilise yourself and start to trust yourself again, start to like yourself again. 

The Pursuit of Happiness is only ever found in your purpose.

When you accept who you are, in the moment, knowing that you can always grow, knowing that healing is not an eternal thing. 

ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE HEALED

Most of us are under this illusion that you have to be forever healing. No, you don’t have to. You just need to learn how to heal as quickly as possible. 

When you cut yourself, your skin doesn’t take forever to heal.

It heals pretty quickly.

Within a matter of days, we heal. So just like that, emotionally, we can heal. But you just need to know how. 

The foundation of healing is your connection to safety and trust. 

When you have a connection of safety and trust with Allah(swt) and you have a connection of safety and trust with yourself.

That means you’ve got to be okay with yourself now. 

When you become this new person, you’ve got to be okay with yourself now, that’s the key.

RELATIONSHIPS ARE A  MUTUAL CONNECTION 

Relationships are not about taking. I want you to change the way you’re looking at relationships.

We’re always thinking about relationships as what’s in it for me.

Where’s my rights?

But relationships are a give and take, a two-way communication.

Your focus has to be on the giving, while you’re taking. 

The give and take happens in both ways. 

If your focus is always on pleasing yourself and getting what you require,what your rights are, you’re never going to be focused on giving.

You’re always going to be focused on taking.

This is the problem I see with so many relationships. We always want, want, want. 

When we don’t get what we want, we feel bad and then we blame and it causes us problems.

So when you’re willing to give to yourself, you’ll be willing to give to others because you can’t give to others what you don’t have. 

When you trust yourself, you’ll begin to trust others. When you trust  Allah, you’ll begin to trust others. 

Trust is a key part of relationships. If you are without that trust, then you’re going to struggle. 

So you’ve got to begin that by trusting yourself and trusting Allah. 

Instead of chasing this elusive happiness achieving goals, achieving things, and collecting from the Dunya, and there’s nothing wrong with these things, we should love to achieve goals and collect all of the things that you want from the Dunya.

But hold it in your hand and not in your heart. What should be in your heart is the foundation of your well-being. 

That’s what’s going to drive your whole life. You won’t find happiness in the collection of the Dunya. 

That’s never been the case and it’s never going to be the case.

So if you want to improve on those relationships, you have to get back to yourself. 

That’s the ultimate key. You have to unlock yourself to unlock your relationships.

CHANGE STARTS WITH YOU

Focus on building the most solid foundation you can with you, your mind, your spirituality, your connections, the way you show up in the world, and the level of energy you have.

It will all be tied into this as we go through the Science of the Nafs process.

In the Nafs Transformation School, this is exactly what I take my students through. As we go through the process, what we focus on is getting aligned with what is best for the optimum version of us.

You will not only achieve all your goals but you will also become the most ambitious person you’ve ever been. Because when you are freed up in your relationships, you can explode your growth. 

Whereas, when you’re struggling in your relationships, it impacts you at work and it impacts you in your professional capacity.

You think that you can just switch off and go to work. 

But you know, we all know, this doesn’t happen.

So the number one game in town is to work on your own relationship with yourself and with your Creator. And then with the rest of the world. 

Be a giver, not a taker, and all your relationships will change. 

You will stop chasing all of the things in life, hoping for some semblance of peace or tranquillity or calm, because that doesn’t come anywhere near what you can achieve in your three core relationships with yourself, with your Creator, and with others.

This dominates our life experience. Focus on that and everything changes. 

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About the Author: Abdul Shahid – Master Coach Trainer & Therapist of Professional Life Coaches, pioneering The Science of the Nafs Psychology model for healing, transformation and peak performance. Specialist in Mind health, wealth and mastery using this Quran and sunnah based Spiritual Psychology.